A free alternative to Microsoft Office
December 16, 2020
A free alternative to Microsoft Office
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Apache OpenOffice
At our University, we previously used Microsoft Office for all our documents work. Our students were also using the same software. But as a Technical institute, using open source softwares is a plus point. We recommend Apache OpenOffice as the default office suite software.
It helped us in reducing the subscription costs to 0.
It helped us in reducing the subscription costs to 0.
- Low size, Apache Open office weighs only 200MB with the full capabilities as that of a 2GB Microsoft office. This saves some space on your system and your internet bandwidth.
- It's Free. That's one of the benefit of open source softwares, they don't cost anything. We can use it on as many systems as we want without any subscription.
- It's cross platform, unlike Microsoft office which is only available on Microsoft Windows, OpenOffice is available on Windows as well as Linux which is used my most of the students pursuing a computer science degree.
- The available file formats are a bit unconventional in OpenOffice. By default it saves the document in .odt format which may work with almost any other word processor but with a chance of formatting issues.
- UI is not as polished as other mainstream products like Microsoft Office so a new user may need some time to get familiar to it.
- No cloud save option available. For saving files online you have to save the document locally and upload it on you favourite cloud drive. And for accessing it on other device you have to download the file from your drive and open it. This is not a very long task tbh but it's still an extra step which may be considered as a minus point to a business user.
- Our yearly subscription costs were cut down to zero which is quite a big deal considering there are more than 500 systems.
- We had to give some time to the employees so that they can get familiar with the software and use it as a daily driver.
- We saved some internet bandwidth and storage space using OpenOffice.
Like OpenOffice, LibreOffice is also an open open source software which ships as the default office suite on Linux operating systems. Libre office is more suited for users using Linux as their primary operating system.
Plus it requires 2gb space, same as Microsoft office so ultimately we decided to go with OpenOffice
Plus it requires 2gb space, same as Microsoft office so ultimately we decided to go with OpenOffice
Do you think Apache OpenOffice delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Apache OpenOffice's feature set?
Yes
Did Apache OpenOffice live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Apache OpenOffice go as expected?
I wasn't involved with the implementation phase
Would you buy Apache OpenOffice again?
Yes